The questions vary, and vary greatly. The students really are interested. They have questions about why Canada was turned upside down.
I give them a presentation to show what happened at the level of our politics, at the level of our social life, when our factories were now peopled by young women instead of young men. They're fascinated by it and wonder how we could do this. They find it so strange, living the peaceful life we have now. Their questions circle around the fact that it must have been a tremendous experience for a little country to do what it did.
The teachers often ask me about the dropping of the atomic bomb. It's widely held, by some who don't know the facts, that the Americans dropped the bomb to kill more Japanese. But they dropped the bomb to stop killing Japanese. That begins a great discussion of how the war in the Pacific really ended, the dilemma facing President Truman when the bomb was dropped, and the role of the Emperor in hoping that some excuse would be given to him.
When there is a Japanese child in the audience, I point out that the Japanese people were the victims of their military dictatorship, and that we should be careful that this never happens here.
In the Toronto area, with a lot of very mixed-race students, you get a wide variety of that kind of question. But by the time I get there, I must say, with the slides, it's a very quiet room. They're really fascinated by this whole subject of the past.